Editing Ada Lovelace (section)

===Education===
[[File:Ada Lovelace sonnet The Rainbow Somerville College.JPG|thumb|Sonnet titled ''The Rainbow'' in Lovelace's own hand ([[Somerville College Library|Somerville College]])]]
From 1832, when she was seventeen, her mathematical abilities began to emerge,{{Sfn|Turney|1972|p=138}} and her interest in mathematics dominated the majority of her adult life.{{Sfn|Stein|1985|pp=28–30}} Her mother's obsession with rooting out any of the insanity of which she accused Byron was one of the reasons that Ada was taught mathematics from an early age. She was privately educated in mathematics and science by [[William Frend (social reformer)|William Frend]], [[William King (physician)|William King]],<ref name=williamkings group=lower-alpha>William King, her tutor, and William King, her future husband, were not related.</ref> and Mary Somerville, the noted 19th-century researcher and scientific author. In the 1840s, the mathematician [[Augustus De Morgan]] extended her "much help in her mathematical studies" including study of advanced calculus topics including the "[[Bernoulli number|numbers of Bernoulli]]" (that formed her celebrated algorithm for Babbage's Analytical Engine).<ref>Thomas J. Misa, "Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, and the Bernoulli Numbers" in ''Ada's Legacy: Cultures of Computing from the Victorian to the Digital Age'', edited by Robin Hammerman and Andrew L. Russell (ACM Books, 2015), pp. 18–20, {{doi|10.1145/2809523}}.</ref> In a letter to Lady Byron, De Morgan suggested that Ada's skill in mathematics might lead her to become "an original mathematical investigator, perhaps of first-rate eminence".{{Sfn|Stein|1985|p=82}}

Lovelace often questioned basic assumptions through integrating poetry and science. Whilst studying [[differential calculus]], she wrote to De Morgan:

<blockquote>I may remark that the curious transformations many formulae can undergo, the unsuspected and to a beginner apparently impossible identity of forms exceedingly dissimilar at first sight, is I think one of the chief difficulties in the early part of mathematical studies. I am often reminded of certain sprites and fairies one reads of, who are at one's elbows in ''one'' shape now, and the next minute in a form most dissimilar.{{Sfn|Toole|1998|p=99}}</blockquote>

Lovelace believed that intuition and imagination were critical to effectively applying mathematical and scientific concepts. She valued [[metaphysics]] as much as mathematics, viewing both as tools for exploring "the unseen worlds around us".{{Sfn|Toole|1998|pp=91–100}}